Wyrre
by metacognitive
Summary: Great Britain was not the first nation to fall to fanaticism, nor will it be the last. Edited 16.06.13.


Title: Wyrre  
Summary: Great Britain was not the first nation to fall to fanaticism, nor will it be the last.  
Notes: "Wyrre" is Old English for 'armed conflict' i.e. war. OCs but I'm doing this with good intentions! Also, some allusions to wizards we know from the series. Translations at end. I wanted to see the effects of struggle in the Wizarding war, as the following events are significant in non-magical history; Rowling has stated that she thinks Wizarding wars and Muggle wars played off one another, and I think the concept is one that can be expanded nicely.  
Also: in _no_ way am I trying to make a political _or_ religious statement. This is all done for entertainment's sake. Not necessarily an accurate representation of the real-life events.

* * *

Els quatre gats, Barcelona | December 1936

"There are rumors," says Evo, smoke curling around his mouth as he exhales, "that there is a _fine_ Wizard going around enslaving the desgraciats, claiming it is for the – what did he call it? _Greater good_."

Montse does not look up from where she scribbles furiously, nearly snapping the fountain pen in her desperate efforts to write. Arnau taps the table they sit at, tucked into the corner of the first level of Casa Martí, and watches her. Evo takes another drag, lets it out with a baring of his teeth.

The French Assembly has demanded they provide proof of the monstrosities occurring throughout Spain – though they ask for little of the effects on the non-magical community. Montse wants to cry, sometimes, purposefully writing all her reports using their technology, because she has never liked the French. The tutors were cruel to her; called her the equivalent of "trash" in their language because they thought the Indian in her meant she was worthless. She believes in more than that, now.

"It's sick," she finally says, in Spanish this time. Out of respect to her they lapse in and out of Catalán, but she knows they've humored her. Their parents may have been doing her a favor when they pulled her out of Chiapas before the revolution, but that didn't mean that they were eager to continue their families' goodwill. Time had given them too much to know about the other, and Montse was on equal footing as they were. Catalán was to be spoken – as long as the Nationals did not rise.

They were in a time of great struggle – it seemed as if their King and Queen should fall. Not Montse's, for it had been years since she had seen the mountains of her home, but theirs. There were talks of traitors and of guerrilla tactics but Montse, bless the round features and flat feet of her ancestors, would not see it. She would take the discrimination before the anarchy. Both the men beside her thought her foolish for it. But their fate would be unknown, for even life in the now is tense with the accusations of bruixeria.

All of them have their wands tucked into their sleeves – hers made of dwarf fan palm and Gukumatz scales, the latter being the only magical reminder of her country besides the round face that stares back from her in the mornings. They took her from the doomed nation for one reason only; despite their claiming to have wanted only to keep her dying in a war she meant nothing for, Montse knew that, ultimately, they had plans for her. The power that had begun to manifest in her young body had called to them and they needed a witch to help them with their white magic, because Lord save them all if they let a dangerous women be raised.

Montse does not understand conventional religion: she still prays to Ixtab for the horrors she fears to see.

When she looks up Arnau is far more relaxed than when they had first entered the café, lounging nearly, the darkness of his slicked back hair making the brightness of his eyes all the more terrifying. Their greenness remind Montse too much of her flag, and she has spent most of her life attempting to forget both it and the effect that his eyes have always had on her.

Evo speaks. She focuses on the sureness of his jaw, the stout fingers that grip his cigar; "It makes sense, really."

Both of them turn to him as he continues, "What else is there for them to do? They have so little power. And we," he smiles even more terrifyingly than the look of Arnau's eyes, "_la més potent_."

She does not think before she says, "Then what makes us better than the rest?"

The men do not seem to understand her, gaze at her uninterestedly. She wants to scream. "Look at me," she says, "I am but a _savage_, but a poor Indian, and you! You the ones who saved me!"

"Then shouldn't we do the same for the non-magical? For the poor, powerless _peasants?_" Arnau says, bored. His gaze flickers to Evo; Montse is never sure whether what he says is for her benefit or their counterpart's, but she knows she resents it all the same.

"Saved me," she says again, "from war. Tore me from my family."

"You don't even know if they've survived," Evo says coldly, and she presses her lips together. Breathes.

"And it doesn't matter," she says, "because I am here, now, and they are not. What of the past? Life is no use if you spend it saving yourself from the next tragedy. Such is life," she says carefully, "now, let _live!_"

* * *

Jiuzhaigou Valley, Sichuan | July 1960

Dai is tired. She looks over the magnificent waters below them, sighs, pulls Xia to her hip and goes back to charming their toys to look brighter. Dejiang is chewing on one of them, and she kneels to pull it out of his mouth. His belly is round and his eyes are sad; Dai cannot remember the last time he ate something of substance, not thin and watery and useless to anyone, let alone a child.

"No, little one," she says, "these must last us." When she straightens up Xia shrieks, and pulls on her mother's short hair with spit-covered fingers. Dai tries not to join the screams, closing her eyes and letting her nostrils flare. Huai will not be home for another few hours, and she has yet to find something to feed him. Food is a luxury – everything else she can provide her family, but food, food is the one thing she cannot give them. And that is the one thing they need.

They fear them, the plain ones. When Dai was young the people of her village had spat on her, accused her of bringing death to them all, citing the war with Japan but she had just been a girl then, and her mother had protected her with as much ferocity as she could before caving and sending the girl to the Tiāncái Academy of Mólì, which taught her the little tricks that her children now found fascinating. That was where she had met Huai, who had come from a family that recognized the mystique in their blood. But they had been unhappy with Dai, and she wonders now if it was all worth it; her children starving, her husband abandoned by his family, all in the name of love.

Xia shrieks again, and Dai coos to her. Her daughter, so lovely; Dai only hopes she could stay that way. It didn't seem likely, and that hurts her more than she could have ever imagined. It's not fair, she thinks, and she yells it at Huai sometimes, forcing him to cast a Muffliato to make sure the children stay asleep.

"This is not the life I want for my children," she tells him when he returns home that night, and he looks at her as if she's smacked him.

"Do you think this is what I want for you?" he says.

"Go to your family," she says, and she runs both hands through her short hair. "Tell them you've left me, tell them you know you were wrong –"

"I'm not going to lie to them," Huai interrupts her, and she pulls away from him as he tries to wrap his arms around her. She shakes her head, and starts to tear up. They look at each other for a long time, listening to the sounds of their children's sleep as they turn in bed. The house is shabby, as are their mattresses, and the walls of their little home barely keep the cold of the night out anymore.

The two of them had built it just after getting married, transfiguring the stones and sticks of the valley into something they could be proud of, a place where they could find love and life. They did that – they have two beautiful children, but for the first time Dai realizes that maybe life cannot be given to them there.

Mao's army has sought to annihilate them. Mólì are not equal, they say, it is not fair. Some have avoided certain death by offering their services but Dai will never allow her children to enter a life of slavery. Similarly, Huai is too proud to bow down to foreign power. But even if they avoid capture by the crazed Reds then they will starve, because Mao lied when he said he could feed the whole nation.

"There is no food," she says, desperate, "leave me. Oh, oh, leave me. I'll die for these children, I promised, remember? I'd rather die than see them starve." Tears fall. "Please, Huai, please. For me."

He stares at her for a long moment, says, "I can't leave you," and she chokes on a sob.

"Then what do we do?" she says, "What do we eat?"

"We'll figure it out," he tells her firmly, "we'll always be able to." He takes off the Muffliato then, walks away from her, and she sinks to the ground. Dai would move mountains for her family if she could, but the only way for her to do that right now is to give herself up and allow others to take in the children – even if it means she loses both them and her husband.

It's a last effort; they haven't had contact with Huai's family since before Dejiang was born. "You're just tired," Huai whispers as he readies for bed. In the mean time, Dai hasn't moved from her spot on the floor. "Or else you wouldn't say such foolish things."

Dai breathes, pulls her hands away from her face, and says to her husband, "They're true, so which one of us is the fool?"

He gives her an odd look, asks, "What is the _matter_ with you?" before climbing into bed; "There's always hope for us, not even with that fool called the Hēi mówáng running around."

She glares at him, at the room that is their home, and then gets up to join him. "Go to sleep, my Xihe," and Dai wonders what she'll make for breakfast the next day, glances over at the two bundles in bed.

Only one moves; and with a cry of "_No_ –" cut off by her urgency, she lunges towards her children.

* * *

Brandenburg Gate, East Berlin | November 1989

Schmidt smokes a cigarette, Lena next to him tutting. They watch as a group of rowdy youths – early twenties, it looks like, and how odd for Schmidt to think them young when Lena has just barely turned thirty the week before – as they climb the wall, already picking away with it. It's been only a day since they let anyone from East Berlin to the West and already they've decided the monstrosity must go.

He agrees, mind you, but Lena has political leanings towards the left. She still idolizes Stalin, mostly because her father was in charge of the wizards they sent out east. These were the witches and wizards who would not bend to communist rule, who did not adapt the way their fellow magical brethren could. Her father was Austrian-German, from well-known stock that could trace their magical lineage well into the thirteenth century, and kept those same magical dissenters under strict control.

But she looks Siberian; her mother is of the Yukaghir people in the most eastern of the Soviet Union, pure-blooded as well. He wonders if the maniac from Britain would have kept her around. There's prettiness in her face, but in _this_ nation, race matters more than blood. Her eyes set her apart and Schmidt isn't sure their Lord Voldemort would have liked the change.

Schmidt's own mother was a half-blood, daughter of a pure-blooded male and his normalen-born wife, and his father was pure-blood. By some wizard's standard that make him a through-and-through pureblood but he has seen the papers from the decades before, and knows that in the eyes of madmen he is filth. Schmidt scowls at the thought, thinking of the girls he'd grown up with being dragged away by the Gestapo and by the Nazi soldiers.

He stood by then, but he will no longer.

But Lena has some of that hypocrisy in her blood, no matter the lack of Muggels there. She glares with disdain at the boys knocking down the wall, says to him, "Destroying a God-sent miracle, you see?"

"You don't believe in God," he says to her, and she lets out a harsh laugh. He glances at her from the corner of his eye, sees the expression smooth, dangerous and lovely. He thinks he's in love, sometimes, but all he has to do is remember her smile at dusk, think of her propaganda-filled beliefs, and he's easily convinced otherwise. Most days, at least. They stay silent for a long moment after, and then she turns to him, lights incomparable to the darkness in her brown eyes.

"You are _happy_," she accuses, and he sighs, looks at the wall.

"There are monsters out there," he says, "and they've just defeated one."

"Stalin was a monster? Gorbachev his _slave_?" she says, eyebrows rising, mouth pursed and purple in the cold. Schmidt stares at her for a long while, thinks about how tired he suddenly feels, and says, "Your blindness will cost us all."

"My blindness?" she snarls, and he turns then, begins to walk away. He hears the clack of her boots, following after him swiftly. The streets are quiet despite the general activity in the air, little children playing about as their parents pack bags to head west. Soon, Schmidt thinks, the West will resemble the East, with all the reds migrating. They walk for a long time, Lena angry the entire time.

"What blindness?" she asks him, fur coat hitched up to her chin by one slender hand, the other gesturing at him angrily, "Do you mean common sense? Is my virtue my only flaw?"

He snorts, says, "What virtue could _you _have left?" and she seems to growl, reminding him of the Wolfssegen his mother taught him as a child, charms that had existed among the Muggels for as long as they'd been known to those who did have magic. She's angry, now, angrier than she had been upon realizing that her precious Union was being destroyed.

"I am German," he had said to her, one hand propping his head up as he sat on an old futon, her flat small and seemingly warm despite the coldness of its inhabitants, "you think I'm _upset_ about all this?"

"And I am from Siberia," she had snapped, "this nation is falling and it _disgusts_ me."

He wants to tell her that, now, that _she_ disgusts him but he knows it means nothing. Instead he wraps a hand around her wrist, presses her back into a dull brick wall. Some days, the maneuver gets her into bed with him, others, a knee to the groin. Today is of the latter. She stiffens, kicks, and he has to bring up the other hand to pin her, angling his body so that her tiny feet don't make contact.

"This is rape," she says, and he feels the surprise flash across on his face. He quickly shoves the feeling – a sting of hurt – away. "I am not Beria," he snaps, "I'm merely trying to control a _freak_ from starting trouble."

"This nation will fall," she says, pushing against his hands, "you know that. I know that. Russia, this potential saved _grace_, is useless. The land cannot be humbled."

"You're an idiot," he tells her, and then she gets a hand free – he braces himself for the smack but gets a kiss instead, drops the hand still in his grip to take her face in his own. Of course she bites down, hard, and he pulls away, swearing at the taste of blood.

"Men like me will always exist," she says, and he sputters at the nonchalance, at the oddness of the phrase on her lips. She takes his hand in hers, though, and pulls them along, away from where the wall that caged him (and not her) is slowly being destroyed.

* * *

The Clock Tower, Hama | June 2011

Fatima looks out the window of her apartments and just watches, for a while. The hands of the clock tower move slowly, barely faster than the traffic that engulfs her city. It's noisy, civilians and government works alike starting to fester as they have in region since springtime, news reports from Cairo and Tripoli serving to incite the masses of Syria and the rest. She rests a hand on her belly.

When she hears the door to her apartments open she says nothing, waits for Hikmat to approach her place at the window. "Brother," she greets, and plays with the scarf she has wrapped around her neck. It's white, somewhat flimsy, and she only ever bothers to put the hijab on when she leaves the house. Hikmat asks her to, even when at the window, but she brushes him off. If her fool of a husband would give her no respect despite the rings tying them together, then she owed no respect to anyone else – and that included their thoughts on her own decency.

Then again, the 'husband' was not her husband, merely a promise that had taken all she could give and then left to Turkey. She had met him in the streets of Damascus just over a year ago, carefully labeled streets that weren't afraid of the sihr within them. The _good_ ones, without their knowledge, knew no better, and with so few in the country it amounted to a barely-there school on the coast, with women even less likely to go than the poor males born into the power.

She was the only one of the family to have_ it_ – at least, the only one she knew of. Hikmat was like their father, afraid of it, eager to squash any signs of oddness that might exist in their home. Her mother, too, had been cautious, and seemed to fear her daughter. Fatima doesn't think of them; they died several years back, a car accident on their way to Homs.

But largely as a result of this, for the fear they had of a jinni controlling her, Fatima has had no training. Every now and then something odd will happen – the eyes will flicker, her brother's beard will bleach to a red, her mouth will exhale steam when it is too hot for water to exist in the air – and it helps, helps distract her from the uncomfortable fate she has, with no control over her magic. Harut had found her lovely, found her ignorance charming, and had been teaching her little tricks. He promised her a wand before he took her, only to take her heart with him when he fled the country around the time Cairo fell.

He shamed her – now, her brother is left to try and find a suitable husband for when Fatima knows it's too late. Hikmat didn't know who to blame, most days. She says, "I feel sick," and keeps a palm pressed to her abdomen, clenching. He stays silent for a few seconds, asks, "Tea?" but she shakes her head. The flies are coming in now, mosquitos making her fingers itch. Outside, horns still blare. Next to her, her brother sighs.

She wishes she had a wand – would do the Antifada spell that Harut had taught her before he left her, if only to free herself from the flies, the brother, and the shame she could not escape. She wants to tell her brother that she does not care, that having a child out of wedlock is nothing, but he and their father had been keen to obey all decent laws, eager to do all they could to erase the existence of a daughter plagued by darkness. At least, they thought so.

"Your faruq won't come," he tells her, and she lifts an arm to her forehead, thinks of religion. He continues, "Whatever it was he saved the world from all those years ago, he can't do a thing here."

Fatima stares out into the city, wonders how much longer she'll be stuck in an apartment with her brother. Thinks of what she'll do with a child.

"I hope it's a girl," she says to him, palm pressed to her cheek. He's moved into the kitchen by then, and she hears his movements slow.

"You didn't even go to university," he accuses her, and she says, "I ruined my chance, I lost my mind, but I hope it's a girl."

"Better to have _no_ child," he says, coming back out of the kitchen. She turns from the windowsill, takes in her brother for a moment. Barrel-chested and with a wisp of hair on his chin. Dark eyes. His hair is shorn short, a button-down shirt half done, and jeans. He works at the construction yard a few miles west, uses his bike to get him there. Fatima stays in the house most days. He lets out a noisy breath, through his noise.

"You've done such a _stupid_ thing," Hikmat says, and she picks at the dark blue of her dress. She's barefoot.

"I want to name her Amal," she says, and he just shakes his head.

"We'll be lucky to survive what this country gives us," and he turns away, "the whole _region_, falling to pieces like this. You'll end up with a Marut."

Fatima looks out the window again, imagines a day where a daughter of her blood could make it to the coast.

* * *

Translations:  
Catalán: els desgraciats—the unfortunates | bruixeria—dark witchcraft | la més potent—the most powerful  
Chinese: tiāncái—talent | mólì—magic | Hēi mówáng—Dark Lord | Xihe—Chinese sun goddess  
German: normalen—normal | Muggel—Muggle | Wolfssegen—anti-werewolf charm  
Arabic: sihr—magic | jinni—magic spirit | antifada—to shake off from one's self | faruq—liberator, savior

I figured, depending on the nation and language, there would be different words for Muggles, or alternate spellings in the case of German. If there are any mistakes in ANYTHING do not hesitate to tell me. I want this as accurate as possible, any and all help is very appreciated. Reviews are appreciated!


End file.
